You Brits need to stop being so angry about success, says Facebook boss leading Cameron’s tech revolution

Britain must stop being angry with successful entrepreneurs and instead ‘put them on a pedestal’ like the Americans, says Joanna Shields, the high-flying former Google and Facebook executive who is spearheading David Cameron’s drive to boost this country’s vital technology sector.

American-born Shields argues the lessons from her home country are invaluable. ‘In the US everybody thinks about starting a business. It is important that we as a culture here in Britain also celebrate entrepreneurs as heroes.

‘Don’t be angry because they’re successful, put them on a pedestal. We do that with some – there’s Richard Branson, James Dyson, but I think we need to make being an entrepreneur a credible choice for people of all ages.

‘Right now, with everything that’s been done in the last three years, I would go out on a limb and say the UK is the best in the world for entrepreneurs and business builders.’

As for encouraging entrepreneurship in people of all ages, Shields’ own household is a useful model - her 14-year-old son wrote his first business plan for a technology start-up over the summer holidays.

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Even so, his 51-year-old mother admits to a little household friction over a certain violent video game.‘My son doesn’t like me very much at the moment. I won’t buy him Grand Theft Auto V, so I am in the doghouse right now,’ she says.

Shields’ main job is as Business Ambassador for Britain’s Digital Industries and chief executive of Tech City – the community of technology firms near Old Street roundabout in London’s East End.

The district around what has been dubbed Silicon Roundabout has seen 15,000 new companies, mostly one-person start-ups, formed in the past year alone and now Tech City is connecting with clusters across Britain – from ‘Tech Croydon’ to ‘Silicon Fen’ in Cambridge, ‘Silicon Gorge’ near Bristol and ‘Emerald Valley’ in Newry, Northern Ireland.

Arriving at a business conference for the interview, Shields wears astonishingly high heels. ‘I’ve got flat shoes in my handbag,’ she says. ‘Men don’t understand these things.’

SILICON VALLEY VETERAN BECAME MULTI-MILLIONAIRE OVERNIGHT

Joanna Shields has had ‘a front row seat’ in the digital revolution since starting her career in California’s Silicon Valley, where she bagged herself one of her first jobs by approaching a dotcom entrepreneur after a presentation and saying: ‘You don’t know me but you need me’.

She has stints as a managing director at Google, as chief executive of early social networking group Bebo and later as an executive at Facebook under her belt, and the flotation of Facebook made Shields, who took just five days maternity leave when her son was born, a multi-millionaire overnight.

Pre-internet she started a fashion business while at university. ‘It was a programme that was matching your skin colour, your body type, to the right type of clothes. It was a flop. I didn’t really have the experience to make it commercial so I took a job.

‘That’s where I first discovered digital technology, because I wrote a business plan for a company that was digitising pictures and sending them over phone lines. And we’re talking 1985 now. In those days sending a picture to someone else took all night, I’m not kidding!’

She has also worked on a fundraising campaign for Barack Obama’s election.

Today, as well as leading the Government’s plans to boost British business through technology, David Cameron has appointed her to lead a US-UK task-force to tackle child abuse images online. She is also a co-founder of The Startup Europe Leaders Club, working with the EC to encourage entrepreneurs to start up and stay in Europe.

A British citizen since 2008, she is married to Andy Stevenson, manager of Formula One racing team Force India.

Alongside her down-to-earth charm comes ambition and influence. She says: ‘Initially I got the call to help No 10 find somebody else for Tech City. I was beavering away and had been doing a few events with No 10 and we had developed a strong relationship. A couple of months later they called and said: “Would you do it?” I thought, “This is my chance.”’

This month, Tech City will reveal the fast-growing firms picked for its latest programme ‘The Future 50’, a project launched with Chancellor George Osborne in April. Out of hundreds of applicants 50 firms will be selected for special support from Tech City and Whitehall.

‘We identify 50 fast-moving companies and, whatever kind of support they need from the Government or the private sector we try to facilitate.

‘The services range from help with visas to negotiating tax treaties. I’m kind of living my ambitions. The one thing I always wanted to do was serve government, and I’m loving it.

‘The internet economy is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 8 per cent over the next five years. The rate of change happening right now is transforming business and society on an unprecedented scale.

‘My role is a bridge between entrepreneurs and business builders, and creators and policy. If anything gets in the way of a business leader growing, raising money or listing, we propose solutions to Number 10 that come out in policy.’

Digital companies in Tech City, launched in 2010, include corporations such as Amazon, Cisco and Google, start-ups and growing businesses such as Mind Candy – the firm behind the hugely popular children’s game Moshi Monsters – and YPlan, the last-minute events app backed by lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman. Shields says: ‘East London is amazing, I call it the epicentre of this movement. It’s inspirational, but it became clear to me it’s happening across the country, so we have created a national cluster.

‘I noticed as soon as I got here that six per cent of our businesses generate 54 per cent of the jobs, but when they get to that high-growth stage, a lot cross the pond and go public in America.’

She hopes Future 50 will encourage firms to list in the UK. Shields also wants technology to be ‘demystified’ because ‘it’s not that complicated any more’, and suggests executives be put on a one-day computer coding course. She says: ‘I did a couple this summer myself just to make sure I had the experience and could speak about it. What people realise is that it’s not as esoteric and hard as they thought it was.’

As for her time at Facebook she describes it as ‘fun to be around’, highlighting founder Mark Zuckerberg’s tactic of launching what he called ‘a hackathon’ in which everyone was encouraged to brainstorm on a problem.

As for what has caught her eye recently, there is one firm in Silicon Roundabout that has clearly struck a chord – MakieLab, which allows people to design their own dolls using a 3D printing process where a machine lays successive layers of nylon based on the digital design.

Shields says with child-like excitement: ‘It’s so cool! To have a doll that looks like you is kind of creepy. I want one though. I’m going to get one of those.’